Neruda, p.15
Neruda, page 15
Neruda also expresses a rare will to remain resilient in the face of the emotional, mental, and situational stimulants that swirl around him (as described midway through the poem):
in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed,
and human exertions, storms,
black actions suddenly discovered,
like ice, vast disorder,
oceanic . . .
Instead of just expressing his helplessness in its face, he inserts himself directly into the chaos; he “enters singing / like a sword among the defenseless.” His singing—his poetry—is a weapon to fight off what’s subsuming him, his will to create some semblance of order.
The poem moves from negativity to positivity. The first stanza ends with:
the fragrance of the plums rolling to the ground,
which rot in time, infinitely green.
The last lines of the poem read:
Within the ring of summer
the great pumpkins . . .
[are] stretching out their poignant plants,
With this stretching out of the pumpkin plants, Neruda too decides that he will stretch out, move forward. He is like that pumpkin, now being filled with inspiration.
It is one thing to write it on paper, though, and another to endure the realities of life.
* * *
In order to break out of his Santiago funk, Neruda would visit Valparaíso. Beyond the port and the large plazas lined by ornate colonial buildings, customhouses, and naval facilities, the city’s forty-two hills rise on curved, mounded slopes like a natural amphitheater. Laid out along narrow, winding streets free of any sense of a grid, the city’s two- and three-story houses tumble over the hillsides in a patchwork of colors, each house a different-colored brushstroke—magenta, topaz, aquamarine; the rich reds of Chilean wines—a bouquet of tones like a flock of parrots. And those colors are bejeweled with glittering zinc rooftops, laundry hung from windows, and countless church spires sticking up like little masts from ships. English funiculars—little trams on cables—run up and down the steepest hills, as if in a South American San Francisco. Valparaíso, in fact, was known as the “Jewel of the Pacific,” and for Neruda it was just that.
Even during his first years in Santiago, Valparaíso’s “magnetic pulse” seemed to beckon to him and his friends. After spending a whole night fraternizing in Santiago, they might impulsively take a third-class train car there at the break of dawn. For this motley crew of poets and painters, activists and romantics, “Valpo” was the perfect setting to let their brimming madness expand, explode, and release down the crazy hills and out into the Pacific.
Now, more mellow and contained than in those first years of active camaraderie, Neruda made his way to Valpo alone, to escape the scene in Santiago. He stayed with some new friends he had made: Álvaro Hinojosa, his sister, Sylvia, and their mother. The Hinojosa family had extended an open invitation to Neruda, and he took them up on it for a couple of days or even a couple of months at a time, not just for the inspiration of the unique atmosphere and the salty sea breeze, but also for the friendship of the Hinojosas, especially Álvaro. In Valparaíso’s offbeat culture, in the poetry of its magnificent hills, twisted streets, and alleys, in his friends’ home near the ocean, Neruda sought respite from his dour mood. Despite the admiration he had earned in Santiago, despite his energetic circle of friends, he was in a haze, more depressed than before. The relief he had experienced in Chiloé was already a distant memory. It didn’t help that both Laura Arrué and Albertina Azócar had been sequestered away from him by their parents. He likely had found other romantic outlets during this time, but nothing lasted.
Álvaro was also a writer, primarily of short stories and columns. He never wrote the great work to which he aspired and never published a book. But that didn’t matter to Neruda. What was of great importance was Álvaro’s example of discipline and commitment to writing. Every morning Neruda stayed at their house, he would see Álvaro, still in bed, glasses on the bridge of his nose, typing quickly, continuously, consuming reams of whatever paper he could get his hands on.
Álvaro was also an important literary influence on Neruda, especially in his enthused introduction of the poet to the works of James Joyce. The Irish author’s aesthetic theory would become key to Neruda’s artistic development as a young man, as well as to his own particular aesthetics, as it revealed itself in Residence on Earth.
The first time Neruda came to the Hinojosas’ house, Álvaro warned everyone not to worry about conversing with him, because he simply didn’t like to talk. Everybody agreed, naturally, though his mother found this to be a rather strange trait for a guest. However, one night when Neruda arrived at the house alone after an evening out, he found Señora Hinojosa still up and began talking spontaneously with her. They chatted for a long while. When Sylvia asked her later what they talked about, she answered, “About business. He’s an enchanting muchacho.”
Although his mental state was lethargic, Neruda could walk for hours. Strolling through the hills, he’d peer into the alleyways that wove horizontally across the streets, never knowing what he’d find behind the lapis lazuli or aqua-green houses. Sometimes he would just sit in one of the city’s plazas with the seafolk or go down the cobblestones to look at the sea and breathe it in. He could spend the rest of the day strolling through the markets, the antique shops, the huge open plazas down on the flats with the sea breeze, seagulls, wharf fish markets, and long orange customhouses. Then he would walk back up through the hills, climbing lines and lines of steep stairs up, then back down, here and there, and taking a funicular and looking out at the view. In the late afternoon he would stand on a pier as the sun dropped down into the ocean in front of him, displaying the same colors that he had seen five years before in the pension on Maruri Street, colors that inspired The Book of Twilights and still absorbed him with sadness.
Nevertheless, he saw some relief and hope in the sinking of that persimmon orange down into the water every evening. At those hours the sun cast a soft haze of light onto the multicolored hills; Neruda would try to absorb some of that art as he watched the sailors from Chile’s navy or those working the cargo boats, doing the same job his father had done at the dry docks in Talcahuano. With his lonely eyes, he’d watch them drink and talk among themselves, or with women, the images in front of him seemingly drawn from his first well-known poem, “Farewell,” published a few years ago now:
I love the love of sailors
who kiss, then leave.
“The Valparaíso night!” he wrote a half century later, “a point on the planet lit up, infinitesimal, in the empty universe.” With the hills glowing like a golden horseshoe above the water, Neruda went out with Álvaro and sometimes other friends to experience the nightlife of the port and the forbidden districts. When they came home, he would often write until he fell asleep. Other days, however, when his gloom overcame him, he might barely manage to move out of the house.
Years later, Neruda built his own unconventional home in the hills above the enchanted port—one of three treasured homes he would eventually own. But in the mid-1920s he was still struggling for every peso. Consequently, Neruda and Álvaro concocted at least two business schemes to come up with some cash, finally acting on Señora Hinojosa’s prompting and entrepreneurial ideas. Their most successful venture was designing and printing “comic postcards” accompanied by simple rhyming lines, which they tried to sell to people in the streets, on trains, and in restaurants. Their only successful postcard had a cutout face of an apache—gangsters of the Parisian underworld during the Belle Époque were named after the Native American tribe—that moved against the postcard thanks to a tiny metal chain. Accompanying it was the text:
Place the card horizontally,
Shake it or tap it lightly,
And you’ll start to laugh uncontrollably.
They managed to convince an owner of several cinemas to use the card as publicity for a film he was then showing starring Lon Chaney, and he bought two hundred. Neruda then quickly wrote to Albertina that he was “thinking about getting involved in the movie business.” Predictably, nothing came of that, and no more cards were sold. He had only just managed to stay afloat ever since he first arrived in Santiago, and now his economic situation was becoming more precarious than ever. On October 8, 1926, he wrote to his sister, Laura, in Temuco, begging her to ask Papá to send money, as the cheapest pension cost a hundred pesos that he didn’t have. Despite the fact that José del Carmen had been adamantly against giving him any money, Neruda implored his sister to have him send it by telegraph “because I’m eating only once a day.” He also needed all kinds of clothes, “especially shirts (N.° 37) and underwear, 87 cm. [34.25 in.] waist.” He asked for socks and handkerchiefs too.
As his father had warned, Neruda needed an actual job with a stable income. He also wanted to escape the tight boundaries of Chile, ideally to Paris, the cultural epicenter of the contemporary avant-garde, where he could write—and just be—in the footsteps of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé. Novelists, philosophers, linguists, painters, musicians, sculptors, and poets from all over the world were moving to Paris’s Left Bank. The great Peruvian poet César Vallejo moved there, as did the Spanish painters Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró and U.S. writers such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Hilda “H.D.” Doolittle, and Ezra Pound. Where else would Neruda want to be?
If not Paris, well, anywhere other than Temuco or Santiago. Even Valparaíso, which was a good momentary escape, couldn’t offer him extended mooring or occupation. His peers were coming and going from distant parts of the world: Spain, Russia, Colombia. Neruda too longed to travel. But how? Several managed to get scholarships of some sort, either domestically or abroad, as journalists or musicians, but there was nothing for Neruda as a poet. In December 1926, Neruda wrote to his sister:
Laura,
I’m writing to tell you, only you, that I’m leaving to Europe on the third of January. Why would I go to Temuco? I’m so bored of fighting with my father. And if you could see my head as it’s going crazy. I have fifteen days and I only have enough money for the passage alone. What will I eat in Genoa? Smoke? Let’s see if you can get a hold of some.
Your Brother
At this point, obtaining a post abroad through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a real possibility for Neruda. In Latin America, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, poets and intellectuals were often named to diplomatic posts, ad honorem, where they could live on a simple salary while working on their craft and acting as emissaries of their country’s culture. Neruda realized this was his best option, his best way out of the country and his financial peril. While for the most part it was a nonpartisan nomination, it didn’t hurt that Neruda was no longer acting like the young radical of previous years. There was a marked lull in his political activity at this time, as he shifted toward a self-centered focus on his own concerns. That “bonfire of my rebellion” was just smoldering now. Instead of answering the call of the poor compañeros on Claridad’s front page, he began a persistent campaign to obtain a post abroad.
Back around 1924, Neruda had had a friend speak on his behalf to a department head in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The department head already knew of Neruda’s poetry and soon invited him to his stately office in the presidential palace, La Moneda. There, Neruda was put at ease, but he soon became frustrated by the department head, who started by saying he was fond of Neruda’s poetry and that “I know of your ambitions.” He invited Neruda to sit down in a comfortable armchair. He then told Neruda how lucky he was to be a young poet, complained about being in a cubbyhole, and launched into an hour-long, aimless conversation. Neruda left with a handshake and an empty promise that he’d be assigned to a post.
For nearly three years, Neruda kept visiting this department head, who, as soon as he saw Neruda coming, would arch his eyebrows and call one of his secretaries, saying, “I’m not in for anyone. The only spiritual thing in this ministry is the poet’s visit. I hope to God he never abandons us.” Every time, Neruda entered with the singular intention of being assigned a consular position. If he could get a meeting, the department head would just ramble on about topics from the English novel to anthropology, always leaving Neruda with the assurance that he would get his post soon.
Nothing came from the man at the ministry until April 1927, when Neruda ran into one of his friends, Manuel Bianchi. Manuel was well established in the diplomatic corps, and he knew how to work the system. “They still haven’t given you your appointment yet?” he said.
“I’ll have it any moment now. A high patron of the arts in the ministry assured me of it.”
Bianchi smiled and said, “Let’s go see the minister.” He took Neruda by the arm up a marble stairway. As they walked, functionaries stepped aside out of respect to Bianchi, which surprised Neruda. After all this time, he finally saw the actual minister of foreign affairs, who hopped on top of his desk in order to compensate for how short he was. Bianchi told the minister how badly his friend wanted to leave Chile. Without missing a beat, the minister pressed a buzzer, and the department head Neruda had been visiting all this time appeared at the office door.
“What posts in the service are available?” the minister asked him.
The elegant functionary, now unable to wax poetic about Tchaikovsky or English novels, instantly rattled off all the cities scattered around the world where consuls were needed. In the rapid flow of foreign names, Neruda seemed to catch just one, Rangoon (now Yangon), which he had never heard or read about before. It was the capital of Burma (now Myanmar). After hearing the list of names, when the foreign minister asked him, “Where do you want to go, Pablo?” with no hesitation he answered: “To Rangoon.”
The minister told the department head to name Neruda to the post.
Rangoon certainly wasn’t Paris, but it wasn’t Chile either.
There was a globe in the minister’s office. Neruda and Bianchi looked for the mysterious city named Rangoon. The old map had a deep dent in part of Asia and it was in this depression that they found it. “Rangoon. There’s Rangoon.”
Chapter Eight
Afar
I’m alone among ruined matter,
The rain falls over me and I am like the rain,
with its absurdity, alone in the dead world,
rejected as it falls, stubborn yet nebulous.
—“Dawn’s Dim Light”
Neruda was eager to leave Chile but distraught that neither of his lovers would go with him. He pleaded with both Albertina Azócar and Laura Arrué to marry him. He went to visit Laura in her hometown in the fertile valley of Colchagua one last time before he left. Laura loved him, but it was to no avail. She was only twenty years old, and her family would not let her go. Neruda did hand her the original manuscript of venture of the infinite man and a portrait of him taken by the rising French photographer Georges Sauré. They weren’t exactly gifts; as Laura described it, he wanted her to keep them safe while he was gone. It seemed Neruda’s main intent behind this apparently heartfelt imposition was simply to keep her attention on him, that with his presence, via the manuscript and photograph, beside her, their bond wouldn’t dilute too thin in his absence.
Even as he wooed Laura, Neruda wrote to Albertina again and again, begging her to go with him. He was met with the exact same problem, the same seemingly unfair obstacle of social class that had reared its head with Amelia and Teresa back in Temuco, now compounded by a bohemian life path that was even more alarming to her parents. Albertina was still living in her family home while studying in Concepción. As she tried to make Neruda understand, her father and mother were controlling, but she loved and respected them; she dreaded disappointing them. Her parents discovered their daughter’s correspondence with the poet and forbade it, and though she wanted to respond to Neruda, she didn’t, as she was unable to sneak out to the post office. Her ensuing silence tortured him. Her life was so restricted—how could she possibly think of escaping with him to the other side of the globe? She loved Neruda, but not nearly enough to defy her parents.
Without Laura or Albertina by his side, Neruda feared the solitude that awaited him in Burma. As much as he wanted the post, he remained timid in many ways and felt afraid of traveling abroad for the first time to such a distant destination, and one so terribly different from everything he knew. So when his eccentric friend Álvaro Hinojosa suggested that Neruda change his first-class ticket on the ocean liner for two in third class so that he could join him, Neruda immediately agreed and named Hinojosa the consulate’s chancellor. The position may have sounded important, but it was an imaginary title; Neruda’s own position was at the bottom of the hierarchy, too low to merit any chancellery characteristics. There would barely be enough work and money for Neruda alone. But Neruda looked up to Álvaro and was relieved by the prospect of having his companionship in this leap into the unknown.
Before he left, his band of friends gave him a spirited good-bye party, the climax of several celebrations that started as soon as the minister gave him the job. “While eating and drinking,” Diego Muñoz recalled, “we would exchange information about Burma, about Rangoon, its weather, its inhabitants, of the beautiful Burmese with their Oriental garments. We painted quite an exotic picture and we all dreamed about that distant country where our friend was going to live.”
On June 15, 1927, a month before Neruda’s twenty-third birthday, he and Hinojosa boarded the Transandino train to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, Neruda met the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, five years his elder, whose first two books of poetry and first two books of essays had been published within the past four years. It would be the only time these titans of Latin American literature and culture would meet face-to-face. Borges already respected Neruda; a year before, he had included a piece of venture of the infinite man in an important anthology he had coedited. When they met, Neruda gave him a copy of the book, simply addressed, “A Jorge Luis Borges, su compañero Pablo Neruda. Buenos Aires, 1927.”
